Youku Tudou, China’s answer to YouTube and Netflix, is making a push into user-generated content. Censorship has put strict limits on buying foreign shows, and a bidding war for domestic content has pushed platforms to seek out cheaper alternatives.
Victor Koo, Youku’s chairman, said that the company planned to invest Rmb10bn ($1.6bn) over three years in “web native” content — original material from viewers and from smaller productions houses.
“We are already entering a kind of new era, of participatory, interactive, collaborative entertainment,” he said last week on the margins of a Youku developer conference. “Devices have made creating and editing video easier and easier,” he added.